Our Infantile Fascination with Celebrities – Tiger woods a la Ris Low

Have you read the 21st Jan 2010 Essay by the BP: Can real readership survive in the age when blogs play Mr Newspaper?

What do Ris Low, Tiger Woods, Obama and ten “celebrities,” I rather forget all have in common? For starters, they’re all great cliché of our age; its the pathos of our times that I can only politely term the worship of worthlessness.  Tip: So if you’re sporting a Tag Heuer that may be just be wrong hardware to bring along when you formally propose to your wifey’s to be side.

Truth is we are obsessed about celebrities; we jabber on about their antics. The new headline recently released Ris Low is now the ambassador of the safe sex, expresses the depths of our lobotomized state when it comes to the mindless of worshiping nothingness: sometimes when I walk around, its hard not to imagine we has been drugged by the allure of nothingness.
But is it true? Well when you consider, a two-hour plus film these days cant even wing it without the help of CGI (computer generated graphics) unbeknown to us, we may have already conditioned to want things, events and sometimes people who are simply not real anymore, there’s no mystery to reality, its lost its mojo – otherwise how can you explain the haughty polemic rise and fall of Mr Huang a la American idol.

Perhaps I am overtly sensitive; for one I don’t watch TV – so I guess when I catch celebrity gossip leaching into serious news broadcasts, it disturbs me and I may even go so far as to say that I consider it an invasion of my privacy. Despite my prejudices, dismissing the cult of celebrity culture as simply infantile sand box infatuation is to elide the realities of history – The first is that the cult of revering celebrities a hardly a new phenomenon and another the internet has definitely not intensified our binge on celebrity juicy bits. Dont believe then; go and feast your eyes on the pyramids in luxor; or the wonder why the favorite montage of Rennaisance artist was Lady Godiva – my point its celebrity culture has been around for yonks – What I will concede however is the internet age may have blurred the line between reality and fiction – with its power of unify audio, visual and now smell seamlessly (since my computer battery is starting to suspiciously like the stuff of instantenous combustion), we have all unbeknown to us fallen under a form of electronic spell. We are glued to Youtube while half our brains are constantly trying to winnow reality from fiction; we are see, but yet we are blind; its something real, but then again it could be photo-shopped or worse still Maya.

I guess at the nucleus of this celebrity cult is the idea very old idea that its a form of voyeurism; and affirmation that life can actually mirror art; that’s one reason why so many put their hard earned money into buying random numbers in your local TOTO outlet – the whole idea that somewhere, somehow the lines of serendipity and fate will intercept and those numbers will just line up magically – I am reminded its a powerful astringent.
Cut to the chase, whenever we snigger at the fallen; it’s not so different from the crowds that once cheers gladiators, when they got killed, it merely affirmed they belief there aren’t so different from us after all -in those days the games were the equivalent of Sex in the City albeit minus CGI and silicone augmented tits – apart from that they were as vapid and devoid of reality as today’s daily servings of lets “tear them down,” galore with loads of gossips infidelities and tangled sheets thrown in; everything from Tiger Woods to the grand con of the century a la Madoff fall from grace is good to go.

But don’t get me wrong; our innate celebrity-instinct isn’t a bad thing per se – it really depends on how and who we direct it too; when I ride my bike for example; I visualize myself as a Lance Armstrong peddling furiously away; never mind the odd Bangla with the made in China, a la black bicycle passing me with hardly a sweat off his brow or that the only thing I have in common with Mr Armstrong is we both happen to be members of the human species – in University, I was hot on Feynman; I just found him really centered and that was how I wanted others to see me. You watch, you decide whether, I was right or wrong?

And when I started in business Warren Buffet was the equivalent of my Beyonce – again, I just fell in love with his worldview and the way he defined personal and public success –  you get my general drift, it pays dividends if you have the right role models and who is to say that isn’t really another form of celebrity worshipping?

Where the the whole idea of celebrity worship goes wanky is when it becomes so encrusted with cultism and the whole idea of pesona that even perfectly sensible and level headed folk are prepared to give up 10 percent of their earnings to build shopping malls in the name of Jesus. Or worse still they take celebretism and everything that goes with it and channels it towards cruelty, and all their backwardnessand begin worshiping some super duper loser like Osama Bin Laden – the worst variety that goes without saying is, you begin to believe in your own myth and begin constructing castles in the air that you’re somehow superhuman because of the pedigree of your education or you simply special . Compared these 7 habits of highly ineffective people; folk like Ris Low or Tiger Woods– and what they hold out – seems positively benign.
My point this afternoon is, you can cut the whole idea of celebritism any way, but if you want to get it right the first time and get the best: sit down and think it through quietly that way you’re able to put the whole idea of whats worthwhile buying into and junking and find the right scale and perspective; once you have done this with a person, blog, certificate, TV personality, politician or even the boy next door; the whole idea just goes into a square slot and its a snug fit – it can nourish, excite and even take you and others who are really fortunate to know you to another level. My point is the whole idea of cultural consciousness is a double edged sword – celebritism is like saccharin: great to keep the waist line lithe, deadly if it’s all you consume. Its really a matter of balance; take it too far; and a kind of intellectual anorexia sets in and all you have is a vapid nothingness where you end up wasting time, energy as life fritters away like a sugar cube in hot tea.

Calibrate celeberitism properly and put it in its rightful place and what you get instead is something that is fun, exciting and just a good laugh to lighten the load of the day; that’s one reason why I think the whole idea of leveraging of celebrities to win votes or to sell anything is just plain madness. I am sorry, but I dont see how someone like Bono who only knows how to strum a bass guitar can possibly make it as an icon end poverty campaign; or how appointing George Clooney as some UN ambassador of good faith is going to save people and planet – I am sorry those are serious problems and celebrities have no place there.  It’s like trying to build the next generation space shuttle with an Orang Utan – sure, they were the first species to conquer space; but do you see NASA hiring monkeys to design rockets ships for their next trip to Mars? Get my point; they are just there for the ride.

But lets face up to cold facts; equality as an idea remains only an idea (mother nature I am afraid, didnt read the script) and the only real equality is to be found in bad teeth, hair turning white and ever expanding waistlines; thats fulfills the demand, there will always be a need for celebrities along with the swan dive story of Icarus along with all the juicy tit bits – as long as the human condition exist – we humans will always need them to either edify or simply tear them down to make us all feel much better and two inches taller.
Darkness 2010 – The brotherhood Press 2010 (Sorry, abt the spelling mistakes wrote this fast)

N.B DO BOOKMARK THIS SITE, IF SOME OF YOU CLAIM, YOU ARE MISSING OUT, BOOKMARK IT, THAT WAY WHEN WE DECIDE TO TAKE OFF SOMEWHERE ELSE, AT LEAST YOU CAN FOLLOW US ON THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD TO CONT READING SOME OF OUR STUFF . BOOKMARK, IT AS WHEN THEY TAKE OFF, AS THEY DO, AT LEAST, YOU WILL HAVE A LINK, DO IT NOW!– ANOTHER GOOD REASON TO BOOKMARK THIS SITE IS THIS HAS HAPPENED  RECENTLY – http://singaporedaily.net/2010/01/11/daily-sg-11-jan-2010/#comment-7611 , THE BP HAS BARRED ALL FUTURE ESSAYS TO BE POSTED BY THE SINGAPORE DAILY. I DID ASK BABY DARKNESS ABOUT THIS AND THIS IS WHAT HE HAD TO SAY, ” There are two ways to read, one is you let someone spoon feed you like a baby. The second is you choose what and how you want to eat.  Remember, if your body is a temple. Your mind has to be the altar piece; it’s the linchpin that makes possible the grand idea of La Convivencia with you and your community, spirit, mind and perhaps 7 million other things– without this one thing, the power to choose, you are simply a cactus on a window sill! 

So understand this little rich girl, there is reading and there is reading, there is a world of difference, if you dont even bother to argue with the belief, you are what you eat. Then you would have absolutely no problem understanding – why, you are most definitely without a shadow of doubt what you read and dont read.

You can certainly categorize what I write, but you have no right to judge ……that was what Singaporedaily did – a broad line has to be drawn, otherwise, dont be surprise, if someone decides its card blanche to give you and me the mushroom treatment, “feed you shit and keep you in the dark.” So this has nothing to do with Anime 3 and her rubberband brigade. I value her readership and support, but this is a bigger sphere we are dealing with here – so this is where I will draw the line…it will hurt…like that other fake site, Temasek review that kept faking doss attacks; but how could they let the real wolf out without first planting the idea in peoples mind, “if it can happen to me, it will also happen to you,” Think about it – they cried wolf – we helped, but this time, I am not going to stick my neck out for no one…its everyman for himself….I dont even care, if the whole house catches fire…call it tough love, but if you aren’t a hard man, then you shouldn’t be in the ring and that’s the only way to deal with people who cry wolf – dont worry dotty, the readers will eventually pick up the scent…they always do, you just wait and see, dont ever sweat the small stuff, life is too short – Darkness 2010……”Missy Dotty